


And I Would Fall from Grace

by lakehymn



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode Related, Episode Tag, Episode: s05e03 Ascension, Episode: s06e06 Abyss (Stargate), Episode: s09e10-11 The Fourth Horseman, Getting Together, M/M, POV Alternating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-24 07:07:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14949921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lakehymn/pseuds/lakehymn
Summary: “Apparently, Orlin had some very nice things to say about Carter’s essence the first time they met.”“Okay,” Daniel says slowly, like he's trying to figure out where Jack is going with this. Like he still thinks this is about Orlin and Carter. “And?”





	And I Would Fall from Grace

**Author's Note:**

> 1) Oh boy. Catch me showing up to this fandom 15 years late with Starbucks trying to figure out what the hell was going on with the scriptwriters' weird, inconsistent characterizations.
> 
> 2) Technically this takes place immediately after The Fourth Horseman, but it has a lot more to do with Abyss. It also includes some elements from season 5's Ascension.
> 
> 3) Teal'c is Sir Not Appearing In This Fic because, quite frankly, he doesn't deserve to be dragged into this hot mess of a love triangle (any more than he already has been).
> 
> 4) This fic has a lot of talking and literally nothing else. Sorry?

i.

“I heard about what happened,” is the first thing Jack says when Sam answers the phone.

“I should hope so, sir,” Sam says, wrinkling her eyebrows in confusion. “I’d be worried about the state of our government if the head of homeworld security didn’t know about the Prior virus.”

Jack replies, in a tone so deliberately patient it goes all the way back around to impatient, “I meant the part about Orlin, Carter.”

“Oh, right,” Sam says. “That.” 

She leans back, careful not to twist the phone cord around her neck as she rests her elbows on the kitchen counter.

“Yes, that,” Jack says dryly. He’s quiet for a moment, and then he drops the sarcasm and allows concern to creep into his tone as he continues, “Landry told me the whole story. I’m sorry.”

Automatically, Sam responds, “Thank you, sir.”

“I understand if you don’t want to talk about it, but…” 

Jack trails off, letting the unfinished sentence speak for him.

“I think it might help, actually,” Sam admits. She clears her throat and adds, “I’ll be sure to talk to someone on base tomorrow.”

“Carter,” Jack says, in the same patient-impatient tone as before.

“Sir?”

“I’ll be there soon.”

“Huh?” asks Sam.

At first, the only response she gets is silence; then, she hears the dial tone. She groans in disbelief and hangs up the phone with just a little more force than necessary.

She makes her way to the living room, turns on the television and flips the channel to HGTV, allowing whatever show happens to be on to provide the background noise for her whirling thoughts.

Twenty minutes later, Sam hears a knock on her door. She answers it, and Jack doesn’t even bother waiting for an invitation before strolling on in.

“Carter,” he greets.

“What a surprise, sir,” Sam quips. “But really, what are you doing here? I thought you were still in D.C.”

“The whole Prior virus thing gave Landry a bit of a scare,” Jack explains, as Sam leads him to the living room. “I thought I’d swing by and help him out. After my plane landed, he called and gave me all the details, so then I figured I’d better check in on you, and _voilà_. Here I am.”

“Here you are,” Sam acknowledges.

She switches off the TV and settles onto the couch, with Jack taking the lounge chair across from her.

“Enough chit-chat. How are you holding up?” he asks.

“About as well as can be expected, I guess.”

“Carter,” Jack scolds, “that doesn’t tell me anything. I don’t exactly have any preconceived notions about this.”

Sam smiles in spite of herself. Not too long ago, if she had tried having a conversation like this with Jack, he would have given her an awkwardly abrupt, noncommittal response, before immediately changing the subject.

“I’ll be okay,” she tells him. “I know it’s selfish of me, but what I really can’t stop thinking about is that Orlin knew me—I mean, _really_ knew me—and still loved me. And he’s the only one who ever even could, and now he doesn’t remember any of that.”

“I didn’t realize you two had that much time together,” Jack says, “that he could know you so well.”

“It’s not about the amount of time,” Sam responds. “It’s because he was ascended when he met me.”

Jack gives her an impatient look.

“So? And? Therefore?”

“He told me how ascended beings can ‘see’ differently than we can,” Sam explains. “He described it as being able to share essences.” 

“Ah,” Jack says thoughtfully. “Now, see, I didn’t know about that.”

Sam nods. “I know it sounds a little ridiculous, but Orlin said he could tell I was a good person with a ‘pure heart’ and a ‘beautiful spirit’.”

Feeling her face warm at the memory, Sam ducks her head before Jack can get a good look at her blush. It’s not like she makes a habit of memorizing verbatim every compliment she’s given, but Orlin’s words had always stuck with her. Hopefully Jack won’t tease her too badly about it.

“Did he now?” Jack says, tone unreadable.

Sam braces herself for a punchline, but when several moments pass and it still hasn’t arrived, she glances back up at Jack. Rather than smirking at her like she’d expected, he’s looking past her, seemingly off in his own world.

Before this conversation began, Sam was sure she and Jack had gotten to a place in their friendship where they no longer had to worry about being awkward around one another. After last year, when they finally had a chance to talk at Jack’s cabin, and they both admitted how easy it had been to use each other, they’d had no choice but to push through until the awkwardness dissipated.

But now Jack is acting weird, leaving Sam to wonder whether things had really been as uncomplicated as she’d thought. 

“I’m sorry, sir,” she blurts. “This is too personal, I know. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

Jack’s eyes snap back to Sam’s face, and he quickly reassures her, “No, it’s fine. It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it, Carter.”

His hasty answer is a clear indication it’s not nothing, whatever it is.

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.” Jack pauses. “I guess I was just—surprised. There’s a lot I didn’t know.”

“Right,” Sam says. She decides not to press the issue, instead asking, “How are things in Washington?”

Jack groans theatrically and answers, “It’s unbearable.”

They talk for a little while longer, and by the time Jack is making noises about leaving, Sam has pushed his weird behavior from her mind.

“Thanks for coming over,” she says, walking him to the front door.

“Anytime,” Jack responds, before wincing and correcting himself, “Well, anytime I’m already in Colorado.”

Sam laughs. “I get it, sir. Have a good night.”

She watches him drive down the street in his rental car, only closing the door once he’s turned a corner and disappeared from view.

 

ii.

Daniel flips through the pages of one of SG-7’s files, hoping for a sudden burst of insight. When none is forthcoming, he groans and lays his head down on his arms, ready to fall asleep right on his desk. SG-1’s briefing isn’t for another few hours, but he’d wanted to get this problem sorted out for SG-7 before then.

The sound of the door to his office opening doesn’t even register until he hears, “Hey, Daniel. Whatcha up to?”

Daniel lifts his head and adjusts his skewed glasses.

“Jack?”

“Daniel,” Jack replies, grinning.

Daniel frowns. “I didn’t know you were in town.”

“Just got in last night,” Jack says. “I wanted to check in on you kids, make sure you’re not getting into too much trouble without me.”

Daniel stares at Jack incredulously.

“You do know the Prior virus would have wiped out the entire planet if not for Orlin and Gerak, right?” Daniel says. “I’m not sure you could describe what we’re doing as ‘not getting into too much trouble’.”

“Good point,” Jack responds. “You did get yourselves into a mess after I left.”

He puts an odd emphasis on his words and gives Daniel an expectant look.

“I guess you could say that,” says Daniel, with a questioning tone and a furrowed brow. “What—”

“Nevermind,” Jack interrupts. “Hey, speaking of Orlin, did you know about him and Carter?”

Daniel gets a familiar sinking feeling in his stomach.

“What, that they were ‘intimate’?” he asks, throwing air quotes in for good measure, before he quickly adds, “When he was an adult, I mean.”

“Yeah, that,” Jack replies. “I didn’t know ascended beings even could.”

“I’m pretty sure it happened after he descended,” Daniel can’t help pointing out.

“Oh,” Jack says. He pauses. “So, uh, did you think about that at all when you decided to ascend?”

Daniel blinks. He stares at Jack for a long moment before opening his mouth to respond, but even then he can’t seem to string a coherent thought together. Plus, his emotions are going haywire, with concern for Jack’s state of mind, bewilderment and irritation all competing for precedence. 

Eventually, Daniel manages, “No, Jack, funnily enough, I did not think about the possibility of having sex with Sam when I was deciding whether or not to ascend to another plane of existence.”

Irritation has clearly won out, and Daniel has to tap a pen against his desk in an effort to keep his hand occupied, since otherwise he might actually reach out and strangle Jack.

Jack rolls his eyes. “You know what I mean.”

“I honestly don’t,” Daniel tells him.

“Forget about Carter,” Jack says. Daniel bites back his automatic, uncharitable response (“is that the first time you’ve ever said that?”), and Jack continues, “You weren’t thinking about relationships at all when deciding which plane of existence to live on?”

“My declining relationships really weren’t a factor, no,” Daniel says.

“I don’t just mean romantic relationships.”

“I—” Daniel starts, but he snaps his mouth shut before the word “know” can escape his lips.

He refuses to offer an explanation or an apology, so his unfinished sentence hangs awkwardly in the air.

Eventually, Jack says, “Daniel.”

“What are you doing here?” Daniel asks, when Jack doesn’t say anything else. “Did you really just want to talk about Sam and Orlin?”

With any luck, Jack will get the message and go away—and, more importantly, never try to talk to Daniel about any of Sam’s ex-boyfriends again.

But instead of taking the hint, Jack shrugs and remarks, “I guess I just didn’t realize how close those two were.”

“Jack, I’m not the person you should be talking to about this,” Daniel says tiredly. “Either I never knew or that’s a memory that just never came back, but I only found out the extent of Sam’s relationship with Orlin the other day, when I read her report from four years ago. Anyway, it’s not like you have to worry about it anymore, right?”

That last statement had come out sounding slightly more bitter than Daniel intended, but fortunately, Jack doesn’t seem to notice.

“I guess not,” Jack agrees, however reluctantly.

“There you go,” Daniel says, before making a big show of looking back down at the files on his desk.

He reads the same paragraph four times before he finally accepts that the words just aren’t going to coalesce into anything he can force to make sense. He’s too distracted, probably because Jack has started pacing, and Daniel keeps catching the movement out of the corner of his eye.

“Was there something else?” Daniel asks.

“Not really,” Jack says, too casually, and drops into the chair across from Daniel’s desk. “I just wanted to chat.” He pauses. “Anything new going on with you?”

Immediately, Daniel answers, “Nope,” and hopes that’ll be the end of it.

He doesn’t really expect it to be, though, and sure enough:

“That’s not what I heard,” Jack singsongs.

“What are we, twelve?” Daniel asks.

Jack shrugs. “If the shoes fits.”

“Excuse me?”

“Dating someone in secret, without even telling your best friend about it?” Jack says. “That was very middle school of you.”

“What do you mean? I told Teal’c,” Daniel deadpans meanly.

“Ouch,” Jack replies, not sounding the least bit hurt. “But who do you think told me?”

Daniel narrows his eyes. “He didn’t.”

He might have. Teal’c is usually more discreet than that, but sometimes he gets it in his head that he needs to be helpful, and he’s commented more than once on Daniel’s post-breakup bad attitude. Daniel is only surprised by the fact that Teal’c had thought going to Jack would be the solution.

“He did,” Jack confirms. “He didn’t say anything until after you’d broken up, though, and even then, he wouldn’t give up any details.”

“Thank God for small favors,” Daniel mutters.

“Come on, Daniel,” Jack cajoles. “Tell me what happened.”

Daniel stares at him. He seems genuinely interested, if nothing else.

“Fine,” Daniel says. “I ended it with him because he asked how I missed that there was another _Star Wars_ movie. Happy now?” 

At the pronoun, Daniel had glanced at Jack’s face to gauge his reaction—though they’ve never discussed it, Daniel has always suspected Jack of knowing more than he’s let on—and Daniel feels validated in his suspicions when Jack shows no reaction. When Daniel gets to the reason for the breakup, though, Jack’s eyebrows just about disappear into his hairline.

“Not really, no,” Jack says. “Explain.”

“Jack, when did that movie come out?” Daniel asks, fully aware he sounds like a teacher trying to prompt a student into figuring out the correct answer.

Jack answers, “No clue. I have a vague memory of Teal’c trying to get me to watch it with him, but you know I don’t like those movies.”

Daniel briefly closes his eyes, taking a moment to find his inner patience.

Then he says, with what he hopes is obvious disinclination, “Alright, here’s what happened. My—whatever—suitor, let’s call him—was surprised by the remarkable chasm in my pop culture knowledge, so I had to explain that I didn’t know about _Attack of the Clones_ because I’d been busy with work.” Daniel smiles ruefully. “Afterwards, I couldn’t stop thinking about how I’d actually been, for all intents and purposes, dead at the time. I’ve never had to lie about anything that big before—not directly, anyway, and not to anyone I ostensibly care about. It kind of put a damper on the whole relationship thing for me.” 

Since then, Daniel has had to come to terms with the fact that his experiences preclude him from having a normal dating life. Normal dating lives are for normal people.

“I see,” Jack says, as though he’s not sure he really does. “And that’s the only reason it didn’t work out?”

“What, you don’t think requisite lying is reason enough?” Daniel replies, neatly avoiding the question.

Jack makes a face and says, “I guess.” He hesitates before adding, “I still can’t believe you told Teal’c about this and not me, though.”

“Oh, like you’ve been so open with me about your relationships,” Daniel snaps.

It’s not like he wants to listen to Jack talk about his feelings for Sam—even just imagining that conversation twists something deep within his gut—but Daniel has always held firm on the belief that ignoring something doesn’t make it not true. Besides, Jack’s lack of trust in him hurts, too.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Jack demands.

Daniel sighs. “Forget it.”

“No, seriously,” Jack presses, starting to sound agitated, as though he has any right to be indignant about this. “You think I’ve been hiding something from you?”

Daniel stares at him for a long time.

“Why are you so surprised that I know about you and Sam?” he finally asks. “While neither of you have ever seen fit to let _me_ in on it, I think you’ve talked to just about everyone _else_ about your relationship. It’s not exactly a secret.”

“Since when do you take scuttlebutt at face value?” Jack scoffs.

“I don’t take anything at face value,” Daniel responds. “It’s when the scuttlebutt corroborates about five years of personal observation, plus information from people I trust, that I start thinking maybe there’s something to it.”

“People like who?” Jack asks suspiciously.

“You’re missing the point,” Daniel tells him.

“I don’t think I am,” Jack says. “You obviously got some bad information from someone.”

Daniel barely resists rolling his eyes.

When the team all went up to Jack’s cabin, and Jack spent the majority of his time there alone with Sam, that gave Daniel plenty of time to talk to Teal’c. That said, all Teal’c had really done, when he filled Daniel in on some of the things he’d somehow missed over the last few years, was confirm long-held suspicions.

The fact that Daniel started dating someone around the time they returned from that trip is almost completely irrelevant.

“Jack, why are you doing this?” Daniel asks, instead of ratting Teal’c out.

“Doing what?”

“Avoiding. Deflecting. Bullshitting,” Daniel answers. “Any of the above.”

“Daniel, I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“How about the truth?”

“Carter and I are not in a relationship,” Jack says. “That’s the truth.”

“Sure,” Daniel says.

He doesn’t add, “If you say so,” but it’s a near thing.

“Okay, fine, at one point it seemed like a possibility,” Jack admits, “but nothing ever actually happened.”

“So then, this—” Daniel gestures between himself and Jack, indicating the conversation they’re having, “—is supposed to be, what? Mutual commiseration?”

“No! Believe it or not, I actually had no intention of talking about my nonexistent relationship with Carter.” Jack groans in frustration and rakes a hand through his hair. “Look, I’m supposed to meet with Landry in…” He glances at his watch. “Three minutes ago. How about I come over to your place tonight? We can talk then.”

“Fine,” Daniel reluctantly agrees, rubbing a hand over his face as he tries to make sense of all this.

“Tonight,” Jack reiterates, and he reaches over to clap Daniel on the shoulder before he leaves.

Daniel looks down at SG-7’s still-open file, sighs and chalks the rest of the day up to a lost cause.

 

iii.

Jack knocks on Daniel’s door with an inexplicable feeling of trepidation, not helped at all by Daniel taking almost a full minute to answer.

Eventually, Daniel opens the door and silently gestures for Jack to come in. Neither of them speak until they’re sitting across from each other at Daniel’s kitchen table. 

“So,” Daniel says.

“So,” Jack echoes.

Daniel shoots him a dirty look. “You’re the one who said we needed to talk. You start.”

“I know, I know,” Jack assures him. “Just let me think for a second.”

Jack’s rare show of concession succeeds, and Daniel, temporarily placated, nods.

“Fine,” he says.

For the last 24 hours or so, ever since Sam had carelessly dropped that bombshell on Jack’s head, the words “pure heart” and “beautiful spirit” have been reverberating through his mind like a song stuck on repeat.

“I went over to Carter’s place yesterday,” Jack begins, “after I heard about what happened to Orlin.” He ventures a glance at Daniel, but Daniel is staring down at the table, unwilling to meet Jack’s eyes. Jack continues, “She told me some of the things Orlin said to her four years ago.”

“Such as?” Daniel responds, with barely enough inflection to make it a question.

He still hasn’t looked up at Jack, but at least he’s fulfilling his role in this conversation, even if it’s only by rote. That’s good enough for Jack, at least for now. 

“Such as ascended beings and their whole ‘seeing essences’ deal,” Jack answers, careful not to let his tone become accusatory. “Apparently, Orlin had some very nice things to say about Carter’s essence the first time they met.”

“Okay,” Daniel says slowly, like he's trying to figure out where Jack is going with this. Like he still thinks this is about Orlin and Carter. “And?”

“You know,” Jack says, switching tack, “I was so irritated with you so much of the time during those last couple years before you—ascended.”

Daniel blinks at the apparent non sequitur, but doesn’t comment on it. 

“Was that supposed to be a secret?” he asks wryly. “Because I’ve gotta tell you, I knew that already.”

“But you never knew why,” Jack guesses.

“I almost said something about it to you,” Daniel says with a shrug. “Not at the time, but after I came back and started regaining some of my memories. By then, you were mostly acting like none of it ever happened, which just made me even more confused.”

“So why didn’t you say anything?” Jack responds, his curiosity overriding the fact that he knows he has no right to ask about this.

“Why didn’t I...?” Daniel repeats, trailing off and shaking his head in astonishment. “Jack, you spent more-or-less two straight years mad at me for one reason or another, and it took me dying—or possibly me coming back from the dead, I’m not sure—to get you to tolerate me again, forget maybe actually liking me. I wasn’t about to do anything to jeopardize whatever we had left at that point, since I didn’t think I would be doing that dying thing again anytime soon.” Jack opens his mouth, a sardonic remark half-formed on the tip of his tongue, but Daniel beats him to it. “Foolishly optimistic of me, I know.”

Jack doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Daniel has stolen his quip, along with one of his last lines of defense: his deliberate flippancy. All that protects Jack from his own vulnerability now is his short fuse, set to go off should anyone attempt to get too close.

But maybe that particular method of protection leaves too many casualties. Maybe vulnerability doesn’t always have to be a bad thing.

Jack stares at the lines of Daniel’s frown, and then he swallows.

“The reason why I was so mad at you back then,” he says, “is because you had the remarkable ability to make me feel like I wasn’t good enough for you.”

“What are you talking about?” Daniel asks. “If anything, I should be the one saying that to you.”

“You never did it on purpose,” Jack replies. “I knew that even at the time, but it didn’t matter.”

“So? What did I do?”

Jack hesitates, unsure whether he’ll be able to explain this, but his shoulders feel weighed down by guilt, and his tongue feels heavy with everything he’s left unsaid over the 10 years since he met Daniel. Since the first time he had to watch Daniel die.

Jack says, “As leader of SG-1, I always tried to do the right thing. I know I made mistakes, but I always tried. Meanwhile, you’ve always been dead set—often literally—on doing the _moral_ thing. Problem was, what I thought was right and what you thought was moral didn’t always match up. Every time you wanted me to see things your way, you tried so annoyingly hard to get through to me because you saw potential for goodness in me that I didn’t think was there.”

“Jack,” Daniel says, and stops; he doesn’t seem to know how to continue.

Jack asks, “What do you remember about Ba’al’s outpost?”

Daniel gives him an odd look, but answers anyway, “Not very much. You know that.”

Jack nods. 

“You tried to get me to ascend,” he reminds Daniel. His lips twitch, forming a bitter half-smile, when he adds, “I thought you were totally full of it.”

“So, what?” Daniel says. “I made you feel bad, like I apparently always did, and you got mad at me again?” Tellingly, Jack doesn’t answer. “Really, Jack?” Daniel asks incredulously.

“Ascension is for people like you, not people like me,” Jack defends.

Daniel sighs as he tiredly pinches the bridge of his nose. “Why are we talking about this now? Why not two years ago?”

“Ah, yes,” Jack says. “That brings us back to the genesis of this conversation.”

Daniel looks back up at Jack, and his eyebrows pull together as he tries to remember what it was.

“Something about Sam?” he eventually asks.

“And her brief tryst with an ascended being.”

“Right,” Daniel says, still looking confused.

“He had essence-ray vision,” Jack states, metaphorically handing Daniel the final piece of the puzzle and hoping like hell Daniel will know where it goes, “so you must’ve, too. I got to wondering about it.”

“‘Essence-ray vision’,” Daniel repeats. “Clever.” Jack doesn’t deign to respond to Daniel’s stalling tactic. He waits, and finally Daniel admits, “I wish I could remember details like that, but I can’t.”

Jack shrugs, unfazed.

“Now that we’ve learned what happens to those who do remember,” he says, referring to Orlin, “I can’t say I’m not glad you don’t.”

“They still didn’t have to take _everything_ when they sent me back,” Daniel complains, sounding more childish than he probably realizes. “They could’ve left some things, at least. Then maybe I’d actually be of some use.”

“Daniel,” Jack says.

“Jack,” Daniel says.

“Can we please get back to the matter at hand?”

“I don’t even know what that is!” Daniel responds. “You’ve been jumping all over the place, and I’m still not sure what you’re trying to tell me.”

“The matter at hand,” Jack says, “is that you looked at my essence.” He points an accusing finger at Daniel. “And you didn’t even give me so much as a watch for a testimonial.” At Daniel’s blank stare, Jack attempts to clarify, “You know, like the Tin—”

“I get the reference,” Daniel interrupts. “I just don’t get what you want from me now. An apology?”

“No, I don’t want an apology,” Jack answers, purposefully ignoring any sarcasm that might’ve been in Daniel’s tone.

“What, then? Because right now, all you seem to want is to drive me crazy.”

“Hey, now you know what my life is like.”

“Jack, seriously,” Daniel says, exasperated, “I think the beginning of this conversation actually had something to do with how you and Sam have been giving off a whole ‘will-they-or-won’t-they’ vibe for the last five years or so, which I now can’t figure out the relevance of with regard to the rest of the conversation.”

“First of all,” Jack responds, “we figured out the answer: we won’t.”

“That doesn’t mean you can just wave it away like it never happened,” Daniel insists.

“Hang on a minute,” Jack says, holding up a finger to shush Daniel. “I haven’t even gotten to my second thing yet. You know, the ‘second of all’ that usually comes after the ‘first of all’?”

Daniel makes a frustrated noise. “Fine, go ahead.”

“As you know, this kind of thing isn’t exactly my strong suit,” Jack begins, knowing he’s leaving himself wide open for an “understatement of the year” comment. Daniel doesn’t take the bait, but then, his facial expression speaks loudly enough that he doesn’t have to. Jack continues, “But I’m putting all my cards on the table now.”

So here it is. Jack is going to have to talk about his feelings. The last time Jack talked about his feelings, it was under penalty of death, and the words were forced out of him by a lie detector so hypersensitive as to be completely useless. The one saving grace of that particular incident was it in no way involved the ‘L’ word.

“I’m listening,” Daniel says, still inconveniently oblivious to Jack’s inner turmoil.

Before going into this, Jack had made a plan. He figured if he gave Daniel enough information, then Daniel would be able to make that final leap for himself, and Jack could get away with not actually saying anything. When forming this plan, however, Jack had forgotten to take into account the conditional nature of Daniel’s intelligence—specifically, his intelligence with regard to his own self-worth. Considering the hand Jack has had in fostering that particular character trait, it was an ironic oversight.

Basically, Jack is getting ready to lie in the bed he’s made for himself.

“Here goes,” says Jack, avoiding Daniel’s sharp gaze. “Carter and I liked each other a lot, once upon a time. Too much not to make everything awkward, including team dynamics, clearly. I should’ve addressed the problem, but I didn’t; instead, I enjoyed the fantasy.” Jack sighs. “See, here’s the thing about Carter: she’s never really minded that I’m a dumbass. She’s pretty much always stood by my decisions, even the bad ones and the ones she had every right to question. Ergo, one of the perks of a relationship between us, fantasy or otherwise, was that it would have been so very effortless for me.”

“Well,” Daniel manages, with strained indifference, “I appreciate your honesty.”

But Jack is far from finished, and if he stops now to address Daniel directly, he’ll lose both his momentum and his nerve.

“Then, of course, there’s you.” Jack lays his palms flat on the table. “You have to question me and constantly pester me into doing better, being better. I’ve known for awhile that you love me, but even knowing that, your disapproval sometimes got to be too much. I thought maybe you wanted an idealized version of me, not the real, flawed thing.”

Daniel is silent for a long time.

“Um, okay,” he finally says, shell shock lending his tone some neutrality. After another long moment, he admits, “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

Jack once told Daniel he “admired” him with a statement containing so much hedging and disclaiming it was barely a complete sentence at all. That Daniel even understood what Jack had been trying to tell him was kind of a miracle, which is why, this time, Jack’s looking to break old patterns. 

Plus, he now realizes Daniel will never put the last piece into place on his own.

“Incidentally, it bothered me the way it did,” Jack continues, feigning nonchalance, “because I felt—feel—the same way. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have cared so much about what you thought. That’s also why I never wanted to talk to you about my—relationships.” He waves a vague hand. 

“Okay,” Daniel says slowly, and Jack still can’t read his tone.

He focuses his gaze on Daniel’s face. Daniel is blinking rapidly, his eyebrows are knit together with a worried line etched between them and his mouth is pulled into a confused frown.

Without consciously deciding to do it, Jack stands and walks around to the other side of the table, planting his feet solidly in front of Daniel’s chair. Daniel looks up at Jack with an apprehensive expression, though he still shifts in his seat to face Jack more directly.

“Listen to me carefully,” Jack orders, crouching down to get closer to Daniel’s eye level. “You know you make my life very difficult, right? When you’re not busting your ass trying to convince me I’m a good person, you’re driving me out of my mind with worry.” Jack takes a deep breath and rests his hands firmly on Daniel’s thighs. “Daniel, if I didn’t care more about your happiness than my own sanity, I’d have found a way to stop you from going through the Stargate years ago.”

Daniel blinks in surprise. “Really?”

“In case you haven’t picked up on it,” Jack says patiently, giving Daniel’s knees a gentle shake, “I’m in love with you, and I barely even mind that it’s going to drive me to an early grave.”

So there it is. Jack has spent the entire evening talking in circles, saying more words at once than he’s ever wanted or needed to before, all in an effort to avoid having to say one thing, and his strategy didn’t even work.

“And Sam?” Daniel asks.

“Should probably pay more attention to what a dumbass I am,” Jack responds, “but that’s an issue for another day. More to the point, it probably would’ve been nice to have an easy relationship with an attractive woman who doesn’t expect much from me, but that’s the extent of it. I’m hoping for something a little more than just ‘nice’.”

Daniel furrows his eyebrows in thought, and the fact that he even needs to think about this is not exactly a good sign.

Finally, he says, “How long have we known each other? Nine years? Ten?” He doesn’t wait for an answer before continuing, “If this is only happening now because of something I said or did when I was ascended, I already told you I barely have any of those memories anymore. Besides, do you even like men?”

“Okay, slow down,” Jack says. “First things first, it took me so long to do this because I had to take some time to pull my head out of my ass. Is that really so surprising? And maybe I was never really interested in men before you, and maybe the idea of it would’ve freaked me once, but that was before I met aliens. At this point, I’ve experienced way crazier things than a midlife sexuality crisis.”

“But—” Daniel starts.

“And this has nothing to do with anything that happened while you were ascended,” Jack cuts in, anticipating Daniel’s objection.

Daniel raises a single, skeptical eyebrow. “Nothing?”

“Maybe not nothing,” Jack allows. “But when Carter told me about that ‘heart and spirit’ deal, and I remembered what you’d said to me at Ba’al’s outpost, all that happened was I realized how dumb I was being. After all, you said that stuff even though you’ve seen me at my worst, which, let’s face it, is pretty damn bad.”

“So if I argue with you about something,” Daniel says, narrowing his eyes suspiciously, “you’re not going to take it so personally?”

Jack sighs and stands back up to his full height, backing off a little to give Daniel some space. Daniel, however, follows suit and stands up as well, so he and Jack are now toe-to-toe—in a purely literal sense, this time.

“Everything feels personal with you,” Jack admits, “so I can’t promise anything. But I’ll try.”

“I suppose that’s all I can ask,” Daniel allows.

“Just don’t expect too much from me,” Jack warns.

“You don’t give yourself enough credit, Jack,” Daniel says. “You’re a good man. I know that even without knowing what your essence looks like or whatever.”

“Sure,” Jack says noncommittally.

Daniel gives him a long look, and then he sagely declares, “‘A heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others.’ I think it was a great and powerful wizard who once said that.”

A grin creeps onto Jack’s face, and he exclaims, “You really did get the reference!”

“Of course I did,” Daniel says, rolling his eyes, “and even though it’s a line from a seventy-year-old movie, that doesn’t mean there’s not something to it.”

“Alright, I get it,” Jack replies, waving a hand. “I had a heart all along, and a brain, and courage, et cetera et cetera.”

Daniel smiles impishly, and Jack realizes too late he’s set Daniel up to deliver an easy punchline.

“Well, I’m not sure about the brain,” Daniel comments, predictably. Then, ignoring Jack’s sarcastic, “har, har,” he adds, “But you do have heart and courage in spades, I’ll give you that.”

Jack pauses for a moment, before shrugging. “You know what? I’ll take it.”

Daniel’s small smile turns into a wide grin, making his eyes crinkle in a way Jack hadn’t realized he missed. Jack ignores everything he’s ever learned about risk assessment and leans forward, gently pressing his lips against Daniel’s. Daniel responds with more enthusiasm than Jack feels he deserves, i.e. at least as much enthusiasm as Jack had hoped for. He reaches out and cups Daniel’s jaw in his hands, feeling barely-there stubble beneath his fingertips.

Eventually, Daniel pulls back.

“I have a question,” he says.

“Hmm?” Jack responds, in a tone meant to convey how little he wants to talk right now.

Daniel ignores Jack’s tone with well-practiced ease.

“What happens now?” he asks. “I realize it’s a little soon to have the ‘where is this going?’ conversation, but all things considered, I think it’s a legitimate question.”

He and Jack are mere centimeters apart, far enough that they’re able to speak, and not so far that Jack has to move his hands from where they now rest on the nape of Daniel’s neck.

“That kind of depends on you,” Jack answers. “Are you going to try to leave again?”

Daniel frowns.

“ _You_ left,” he points out.

“I left Colorado,” Jack counters. “You were leaving the galaxy.”

Daniel purses his lips but doesn’t argue.

“I do still want to go to Atlantis,” he says, “but not yet and, if I actually have a reason to come back, not permanently.”

“Well, that’s good to hear. What about ascension?”

“What about it?”

Jack suppresses a deep sigh. “Do you want to do it again or not?”

“Oh.” Daniel pauses. “No.” Another pause. “Besides, even if I did, they aren’t exactly in a hurry to offer it to me again.”

“You don’t think so?”

“Not unless you know something I don’t about the Ancients’ belief in the ‘third time’s the charm’ principle.”

“Uh, that would be a no,” Jack says. “So they really won’t want to try again?”

“Jack,” Daniel begins, using the tone he generally reserves for lectures. He steps away from Jack and starts pacing the floor as he explains, “The only reason I’m even here right now is because, after the Sam replicator killed me, I basically just annoyed them into sending me back.”

“Now, that I can believe,” Jack says.

Daniel, ignoring the gibe, continues, “I’m assuming it didn’t escape your notice that they put me back on Earth this time, instead of on some random planet without any memories.”

Not only did it not escape Jack’s notice, but the image of finding Daniel in his office that day has been permanently etched into his memory, and not _just_ because of the state Daniel had been in at the time.

“Yeah, so?”

“After I’d make it clear I had no interest in rejoining them, they were more than happy to get rid of me,” Daniel says, “and I’m about ninety-seven percent sure they did it the way they did just so they wouldn’t have to deal with me afterwards.” Daniel hesitates, blushing and anxiously rubbing the back of his neck, before he adds, “They kind of left that to you, actually.”

Jack groans. “Don’t say that. I hate feeling like I owe those bastards.” Daniel rolls his eyes, but a smile is playing on his lips. Jack asks, “What’s the other three percent?”

“The possibility that they were being considerate.”

“Fair.” Jack reaches out and takes Daniel’s hand. “Feel better now?”

“Not quite,” Daniel confesses, staring down at his and Jack’s interlocking fingers. “I’m still not sure what happens next.”

“Now, you deal with the Ori,” Jack answers, “and I’ll deal with the assholes in Washington.”

“That’s it? That’s your whole plan?”

Jack shrugs in the face of Daniel’s skepticism. 

“As long as we stay in the same galaxy and on the same plane of existence,” he says, “we can make it work, no sweat.”

“You really believe it’ll be that easy?” Daniel asks.

“Of course I do,” Jack answers honestly.

“Okay, then,” Daniel says.

His tone remains somewhat skeptical, but he seems willing enough to follow Jack’s lead on this one. Besides, it doesn’t really matter if he still needs some convincing—Jack is confident enough for the both of them.


End file.
